Since 2002, Organic/Mechanic has been the personal website of Adam Harvey.

Tag: cre­ative writ­ing

Thursday, 31 October 2002

and it seemed that as soon as i closed my eyes they were open again. but the oth­er side: hel/​nirvana/​heaven/​purgatory/​hell what­ev­er you call it, was kind of bor­ing. just shades of dead folks walk­ing around look­ing ap­a­thet­ic. it sucked. i’d rather ex­pect­ed a par-tay.

so i went back.

and now i’m stuck, ghost­writ­ing in rather strange ways. i can pos­sess things now. for in­stance, since i have no cor­po­re­al ex­is­tence i had to pos­sess this com­put­er to write. its pret­ty fun flick­ing around elec­trons. i guess i’m a lawn­mow­er man. but its hard­er to con­cen­trate with noth­ing to keep my ether held to­geth­er but my will.

you don’t re­al­ly need ex­or­cism or any­thing like that to get rid of ghosts, just dis­tract them, then turn on a fan.

an­oth­er thing, i thought i was just on the oth­er side for a mo­ment or two, but when i came back i was al­ready old dry bones. you see, the eas­i­est spot to reap­pear is in your old body. i guess an affin­i­ty al­ways re­mains. but i’d long since rot­ted and all that was left in my os­suary were my bones and an an­ti­so­cial spi­der.

on­ce i got the hang of be­ing ethe­re­al it was pret­ty fun. i can go through walls, but not with ease. will­ing my­self through things takes a lot of en­er­gy, thats why when you see a ghost come out of a wall they are all pale. nor­mal­ly we look more along the lines of a col­ored over­head trans­paren­cy. i can move as fast as my thought across open spaces how­ev­er.

i thought i’d check out my fam­i­ly, just for old times sake. they were all dead too. so i be­came one of those an­ces­tral ghosts roam­ing and moan­ing the halls of the goth­ic castle. or not quite. ac­tu­al­ly i just chilled in the hous­es of my family’s de­scen­dents. every on­ce in awhile when i wasn’t pay­ing at­ten­tion they would bump in­to me and get a chill.

why didn’t they see me? that’s easy, peo­ple on­ly see ghosts when they know to look for them. its hard to catch one of us by sur­prise. af­ter all we are pure will. it still got bor­ing af­ter awhile. there is on­ly so much you can do as a spec­tre. i could have picked up the whole rat­tling chains and wail­ing thing but in­stead i de­cid­ed i’d go find some moun­tains and roam around the peaks and val­leys.

af­ter awhile i’m sure i’ll start to get the hang of it, my spir­it will melt in­to the land and you’ll be able to hear my chuck­le on crisp au­tumn evenings. it’ll prob­a­bly just sound like rustling leaves, but it’ll re­al­ly be me.

Wednesday, 30 October 2002

it hurt them more than it hurt me, so of course i would put a brave face on it and lie to their eyes as i told them i was feel­ing health­ier and would see them in the morn­ing. they couldn’t un­der­stand that i want­ed to die.

i was worn out, dy­ing is a rough busi­ness and all i want­ed was some sleep. per­ma­nent­ly. they were be­ing strong and ly­ing to me with the same brave face, telling me i looked bet­ter and that they’d see me in the morn­ing. ap­par­ent­ly they thought i need­ed it.

i’m pret­ty sure they wouldn’t have been able to com­pre­hend that i was no longer suf­fer­ing. the pain had long ago leached all phys­i­cal sen­sa­tion from my body. i was al­ready in the oth­er world, just tied to the body. when we are dy­ing we are tru­ly ghosts.

any­way, i let them tell them­selves that they’d done their part and i watched them leave, pulling their doubt of my sur­vival through the night on with their coats. i didn’t quite know what i looked like any­more, but the blanch­ing faces of my fam­i­ly each time they came to vis­it let me know it nev­er got bet­ter. oh well, that hadn’t been my con­cern for quite some time.

i don’t wor­ry if they’ll be al­right on­ce i’m gone. its not that i don’t care, more like there is no point in wor­ry­ing be­cause i’m go­ing to die any­way.

still, on­ce they all left, it was much eas­ier. if i died in front of them i would have had to have put on a good show, death rat­tle and all. i didn’t want to dis­ap­point, be­sides every night they were ex­pect­ing that phone call. i didn’t no­ti­fy any­one of my in­ten­tions, the re­lease date was not pub­lic, just a pri­vate show­ing for my friend the bed pan. on­ly one box of­fice re­turn for me, six feet down. so i closed my eyes.

Saturday, 3 August 2002

well i drove 4 hours home to­day. i’ll of­fi­cial­ly be here for three weeks al­though i am go­ing to spend some time in Chicago. as soon as i got home i be­gan ‘nest­ing’ as my moth­er calls it, go­ing through all of my stuff and run­ning around in cir­cles like a dog does to as­sert and make it­self fa­mil­iar with its ter­ri­to­ry. any­way, i was go­ing through my file cab­i­net do­ing my year­ly pack­rat purge and i came across this one page sto­ry i wrote in 7th grade eng­lish class. i re­pro­duce it here in all it orig­i­nal hor­ri­ble­ness.

“Hey Skatch! Over here! The an­nu­al Ditterbloknic came up­on me un­ex­pect­ed­ly.” The Pysk rode her fer­ret to­ward the sound of the voice. “Heran must of got­ten drunk again,” she thought. “Heran, you im­be­cile, if you didn’t have a hang­over you would know that the Ditterbloknic was last dek­tide.” (mon­th) “Just free me,” Heran mut­tered. The Pysk sighed. “Heran you are the strangest Halfling I have ever known.” “Will you please free me?” the Halfling begged. The fer­ret chit­tered, and side­stepped ner­vous­ly. There were snuf­fling and grunt­ing sounds amid­st the heather. The sky be­came streaked with pur­ple and green. Everything on the hori­zon be­came grotesque­ly twist­ed out of shape. The fer­ret be­gins to chase his tail. “Easy Zine, calm down, help Heran!” Skatch shrieked. “I will if you ever free me!” Heran roared. Suddenly, all was calm. The fer­ret rolled on its side pant­i­ng. “Gee Skatch, the way you leapt off that fer­ret and ran to me al­most makes me think you were wor­ried about me.” “I should prob­a­bly have left you to Shenar and the Juggers.” “Not them, they take pride in tor­ture, they think its fun­ny.” “Why on­ce I heard that they stake you out on an anthill and pour hon­ey on your.” The Pysk shud­dered. “You last two or three days, but you go in­sane long be­fore you die.” “Well I should prob­a­bly free you,” Skatch sighed. “I was be­gin­ning to think you nev­er would.” Skatch be­gan to sing. Her song was low, light, and lilt­ing, but the song that the ground echoed back was a deep rum­ble. Heran sprang free from his trap. “Yaha! Finally I am free!” Skatch and the fer­ret watched com­pla­cent­ly wh­lie Heran danced around the din­gle. When he fi­nal­ly set­tled down Skatch had a con­fer­ence. “Now,” she said, “we must dis­cuss what has just hap­pened. These re­cur­ring time swirels are very strange, we must go to Shamino.” “Not that wiz­ard who thinks he’s a Mage,” the Halfling groaned. “Yes, him,” the Pysk said in­dig­nant­ly. “Now get off the ground and fol­low me.” The Pysk and Halfling stroll out of the din­gle and west to the wizard’s vil­la. The fer­ret, still pant­i­ng, trots be­hind.

The End (or is it)

Rewriting that made me re­al­ize just how much i bas­tardized from oth­er sto­ries. jee­bus. its fun­ny to see my at­tempts at al­lit­er­a­tion and the big words i use gra­tu­itous­ly. i got a 30⁄20 on it. yeah ex­tra cred­it points for pla­gia­riz­ing.